If you haven’t heard about it you will. And if you think it won’t happen in Australia, you’re wrong.
Thieves can use RFID technology to empty your card. Seems they can steal your details with a cheap credit card reader, which they hold near you wallet or purse. It could be on public transport, or standing next to you in a supermarket. Continue reading Saturday salon 21/5
While it is far too early for polls to be genuinely predictive, a new crunching of the numbers has produced a plausible scenario where the crossbench including Xenephon will simply be irrelevant, and the Greens alone will hold the balance of power in the Senate if numbers are fairly even in the HoR.
Metapoll intends to do polling of voters intentions for the senate, as will no doubt other pollsters. Meanwhile they have analysed recent polls by other organisations and inferred from them a senate result using the NSW upper house election data as a proxy for preference flows, as its voting system is most similar to the new senate voting laws. This is how it came out: Continue reading Narrow Turnbull win could be a nightmare
If Duncan Storrar knew how his life would change by asking a question on television, chances are he would have stayed stumm. Storrar sent a statement to Media Watch. Here is an extract, giving the main points:
July 2 is going to be a long time coming if the first few days are any indication.
Today a main election news item on ABC radio was still whether Shorten would take us back to the polls rather than do a deal with the Greens.
Turnbull ran into trouble in Sydney’s west when all the press was interested in was who Fiona Scott, member for Lindsay, voted for in the Liberal Party leadership spill. Turnbull cancelled the rest of the day’s campaigning, as well he might if showing up is only going to feed the media’s obsession with irrelevance that is damaging to his campaign. Continue reading Please can we have policy rather than politics?
A record 177 countries signed the UN Paris climate agreement in New York on 22 April. That was a record for signing any international agreement on one day.
A few short days earlier another record had been broken – for the first time on any day CO2 emissions exceeded 409 parts per million. If you want some perspective on how aggressively we are forcing the climate, take a look at this graph, albeit from 2013: Continue reading After Paris, how do we really tackle climate change?
The title is courtesy of Laurie Oakes’s column. I’ll come back to that.
The ABC is live-blogging here, and The Guardian here. The Conversation has an Election 2016 heading, and an election policy explainer. The ABC also has an election site. Continue reading Misfiring PM grabs the starting gun
Scott Morrison’s 2016 budget got copious praise from Peter Martin, at least in terms of the processes used.
Not so much from his Fairfax mate, Ross Gittins, who said it looked as though it was pulled together with a checklist, but did next to nothing in terms of economics or reform. It was a political document. Continue reading What ScoMo didn’t tell us
Here’s a thread where you can vent about the budget, should you so desire.
Peter Martin has a handy list of what we already know, which is quite a lot.
The ABC does too.
Ross Gittins tells us what not to believe. He reckons they don’t use the appropriate accounting methods to add up the figures. He also says not to obsess so much about deficits. It is the government’s responsibility to borrow to spend on infrastructure and other good things. Continue reading Budget open thread
The release of the Grattan Institute report Hot property: negative gearing and capital gains tax has raised the temperature of the scare campaign for a day or so on Labor’s Positive plan to help affordable housing, aka negative gearing.
Turnbull says Labor’s policy will drive down house prices:
Grattan found otherwise. Continue reading Negative gearing: the election scare campaign continues
Arguably the election campaign started on Sunday with Turnbull’s formal rejection of the ALP’s negative gearing campaign. With 68 days to go the polls are all square in the House of Representatives, and, intriguingly, look set to deliver a hung Senate, with the casting vote resting with pesky crossbenchers. Incredibly, Turnbull may win, but not have enough head room to pass legislation at a joint sitting without negotiating with some of the people he wanted to get rid of.
A few people have been looking at the likely Senate outcomes and the prospects are interesting. Continue reading All square and going nowhere?
Four hundred years ago on April 1616, William Shakespeare, “widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist”, died apparently from partying too hard on his 52nd birthday. Arguably he is the world’s greatest writer. Continue reading Saturday salon 23/4
Bernard Keane at Crikey has done some fact-checking (paywalled) on Scott Morrison’s the statements on the government’s fiscal policy and has found the Treasurer telling a few porkies. Continue reading Mr Morrison, would you please stop lying?
